March 22, 2017 AT 3:15 pm

OK this is all kinds of amazing. We don’t get to feature as many chemistry projects here as we would like – and especially not proclaimed open-source ones like this. We look forward to seeing this project by mux develop even further – what started with an inspiring ‘feature requests‘ thread on the Science Madness forum has lead to this iteration of the hot plate stirrer project, complete with ESP8266, custom milled enclosure, and variable DC power input. Pretty snazzy! The video below is very thorough and mux walks through all the sub-components and features, including the motivation behind certain design features as well as what to improve upon. And again, this all started with a help request. So cool!

1 Comment

Interesting project. I experimented with a rotating magnetic field but I was using 8 coils, not 4. I could never get the magnetic strength strong enough to reliably spin a 10mm X 50mm at the speed I wanted and I finally settled on a pair of 0.75″ X 0.75″ X 0.25″ super magnets mounted on a 120mm server fan. We still produce the Black MAXX stir plates based on this design today. I look foreword to see what you finally come up with.